Joke is no longer on Obama

The killing of Osama bin Laden has proved a trove of comedy gold for late-night television, which had grown moribund lately over Donald Trump and Washington’s federal budget problems.

“President Obama says he won’t release the bin Laden death photos,” Jay Leno said Wednesday. “So I guess we’ll just have to wait for Donald Trump to force him to do that, too.”

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Said David Letterman, “We finally killed bin Laden. That didn’t take too long.”

For late-night comedians, however, Obama’s decisive handling of the covert mission is challenging the pervasive caricature they have crafted of him as an indecisive bumbler who is playing into Republicans’ hands with a succession of mistakes.

Whether a revised image of Obama emerges on late night is an open question.

“Now all of a sudden with bin Laden, Obama’s fatal flaw has been solved,” said Bernie Heidkamp, contributing editor of the PopPolitics.com blog and a Chicago-based cultural critic.

With a combined audience of millions of viewers, Leno, Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher and others are shaping distinct and durable attitudes about Obama. His political compromises and aloof demeanor underpin the withering, satirizing monologues.

“They really have an impact on forming perceptions, even though the comics really can be unfair,” said Kenneth Warren, a political scientist and pollster at Saint Louis University. “They do move numbers, and that is also why politicians keep going on their shows.”

Sketch shows like “Saturday Night Live” also influence how presidents are viewed. Their famous sendup of former President Ford as hopelessly uncoordinated is probably better remembered than the fact that Ford played football at the University of Michigan.

A persistent thread running through late-night TV casts Obama as a wishy-washy intellectual. It is the flip side of how former President George W. Bush was defined, as not too bright but never indecisive.

“A year into Obama’s first term in office, unemployment is higher, the national debt is higher, and there are more soldiers serving in Afghanistan,” Fallon said at the time. “When asked about it, Obama was like, ‘Well, technically that is change.’”

Said Leno, “You know, it’s incredible. He took something that was in terrible, terrible shape, and he brought it back from the brink of disaster: the Republican Party.”

Heidkamp said late-night comedy has a natural aversion to intellectuals, which comedians relay to their audience in mockery of Obama.

Part of the problem is that Obama, famously cool, just doesn’t give late-night comedy much to work with. His verbal gaffes are minimal, he is not sufficiently quirky, and he doesn’t do much to embarrass himself.

“They finally maybe struck a deal to avert a government shutdown,” Maher said recently. “Of course, all on the Republican terms. You can always tell when Obama’s negotiations with the Republicans are winding down, because he’s missing his watch and his lunch money.”

Larry Lyon, a sociology professor at Baylor University, said audiences for programs like “The Daily Show” tend to be younger, more politically liberal and share the worldview of host Jon Stewart.

Leno, Letterman and even Conan O’Brien draw more diverse viewers and less politically active audiences — and tend to have more influence because they are not just preaching to the converted, Lyon said.

“When Leno decides something is ridiculous, like Donald Trump has gone too far and we can’t take him seriously now, people hear it and nod along,” Lyon said.

In a monologue last week, Leno said, “Donald Trump says he’s President Obama’s worst nightmare. No. Having to make a decision is President Obama’s worst nightmare.”

Going forward, those jokes may be tougher to pull off — at least until Obama’s post-mission bounce in the polls wears off.

“The Obama White House has changed its mind and decided to release those Osama photos,” O’Brien said. “On a set of commemorative plates.”